IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v66y2017icp150-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How do incidental emotions impact pro-environmental behavior? Evidence from the dictator game

Author

Listed:
  • Ibanez, Lisette
  • Moureau, Nathalie
  • Roussel, Sébastien

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of emotions on monetary donations to pro-environmental causes. We design a three-stage laboratory experiment. In the first stage, participants have the possibility to receive an endowment from an effort game. In the second stage, emotions are induced in the participants. Finally, participants play a dictator game in which the recipient is an environmental Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). We show that incidental emotions do not prompt donations themselves, but that certain emotional states (“Awe”) can increase the amount donated.

Suggested Citation

  • Ibanez, Lisette & Moureau, Nathalie & Roussel, Sébastien, 2017. "How do incidental emotions impact pro-environmental behavior? Evidence from the dictator game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 150-155.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:66:y:2017:i:c:p:150-155
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2016.04.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804316300167
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socec.2016.04.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James J. Heckman, 1976. "The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 5, number 4, pages 475-492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Nyborg, Karine & Howarth, Richard B. & Brekke, Kjell Arne, 2006. "Green consumers and public policy: On socially contingent moral motivation," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 351-366, November.
    3. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard H, 1986. "Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 59(4), pages 285-300, October.
    4. Cryder, Cynthia E. & Lerner, Jennifer & Gross, James J. & Dahl, Ronald E., 2008. "Misery Is Not Miserly," Scholarly Articles 37093805, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    5. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    6. Forsythe Robert & Horowitz Joel L. & Savin N. E. & Sefton Martin, 1994. "Fairness in Simple Bargaining Experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 347-369, May.
    7. Uri Gneezy & Alex Imas & Kristóf Madarász, 2012. "Conscience Accounting: Emotional Dynamics and Social Behavior," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series 563, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    8. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.
    9. Raghunathan, Rajagopal & Pham, Michel Tuan, 1999. "All Negative Moods Are Not Equal: Motivational Influences of Anxiety and Sadness on Decision Making, , , , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 56-77, July.
    10. Loewenstein, George, 1987. "Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 97(387), pages 666-684, September.
    11. Andrade, Eduardo B. & Ariely, Dan, 2009. "The enduring impact of transient emotions on decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 1-8, May.
    12. Rousu, Matthew C. & Baublitz, Sara J., 2011. "Does perceived unfairness affect charitable giving? Evidence from the dictator game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 364-367, August.
    13. George Loewenstein, 2000. "Emotions in Economic Theory and Economic Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 426-432, May.
    14. Elster, Jon, 1996. "Rationality and the Emotions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(438), pages 1386-1397, September.
    15. Jon Elster, 1998. "Emotions and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 47-74, March.
    16. Rudd, Melanie & Vohs, Kathleen D. & Aaker, Jennifer, 2012. "Awe Expands People's Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being," Research Papers 2095, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    17. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    18. Loewenstein, George, 1996. "Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 272-292, March.
    19. John A. List, 2007. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115, pages 482-493.
    20. Mónica C. Capra, 2004. "Mood-Driven Behavior in Strategic Interactions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 367-372, May.
    21. Oxoby, Robert J. & Spraggon, John, 2008. "Mine and yours: Property rights in dictator games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 703-713, March.
    22. John A. List, 2011. "The Market for Charitable Giving," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 157-180, Spring.
    23. Uri Gneezy & Alex Imas & Kristóf Madarász, 2014. "Conscience Accounting: Emotion Dynamics and Social Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(11), pages 2645-2658, November.
    24. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    25. Bosman, Ronald & Sutter, Matthias & van Winden, Frans, 2005. "The impact of real effort and emotions in the power-to-take game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 407-429, June.
    26. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 1996. "Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 181-191, October.
    27. Tiedens, Larissa Z. & Linton, Susan, 2001. "Judgment under Emotional Uncertainty: The Effects of Specific Emotions and Their Associated Certainty Appraisals on Information Processing," Research Papers 1629, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jana S. Kesenheimer & Tobias Greitemeyer, 2021. "Going Green (and Not Being Just More Pro-Social): Do Attitude and Personality Specifically Influence Pro-Environmental Behavior?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-12, March.
    2. Wang, Lili & Lyu, Jiaying, 2019. "Inspiring awe through tourism and its consequence," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 106-116.
    3. Umer, Hamza & Kurosaki, Takashi & Iwasaki, Ichiro, 2022. "Unearned Endowment and Charity Recipient Lead to Higher Donations: A Meta-Analysis of the Dictator Game Lab Experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin & Alhusen, Harm, 2019. "On the determinants of pro-environmental behavior: A literature review and guide for the empirical economist," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 350, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics, revised 2019.
    5. Jürgen Fleiß & Kurt A. Ackermann & Eva Fleiß & Ryan O. Murphy & Alfred Posch, 2020. "Social and environmental preferences: measuring how people make tradeoffs among themselves, others, and collective goods," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 28(3), pages 1049-1067, September.
    6. Maja Adena & Steffen Huck, 2022. "Voluntary ‘donations’ versus reward-oriented ‘contributions’: two experiments on framing in funding mechanisms," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(5), pages 1399-1417, November.
    7. Benistant, Julien & Suchon, Rémi, 2021. "It does (not) get better: Reference income violation and altruism," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    8. Lisette Ibanez & Sébastien Roussel, 2022. "The impact of nature video exposure on pro-environmental behavior: An experimental investigation," Post-Print hal-03847453, HAL.
    9. Song, Yan & Zhang, Lu & Zhang, Ming, 2022. "Research on the impact of public climate policy cognition on low-carbon travel based on SOR theory—Evidence from China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(PA).
    10. Jiang, Bing & Pan, Xiaofei, 2023. "An anger premium: An experiment on the role of counterpart emotions in coordination," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    11. Michael Kurtz & Steven Furnagiev & Rebecca Forbes, 2023. "A field study on the role of incidental emotions on charitable giving," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 94(1), pages 167-181, January.
    12. Julien Benistant & Remi Suchon, 2020. "It Does (not) Get Better: Expected Income Violation and Altruism," Working Papers ECARES 2020-35, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Minnich, Aljoscha, 2022. "Do fans’ emotions influence charitable donations? Evidence from monetary and returnable cup donations in German soccer stadiums," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    14. Chengcai Tang & Qianqian Zheng & Pin Ng, 2019. "A Study on the Coordinative Green Development of Tourist Experience and Commercialization of Tourism at Cultural Heritage Sites," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(17), pages 1-19, August.
    15. Lange, Florian & Dewitte, Siegfried, 2020. "Positive affect and pro-environmental behavior: A preregistered experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    16. Amy Isham & Judith Geusen & Birgitta Gatersleben, 2022. "The Influence of Framing Plant-Based Products in Terms of Their Health vs. Environmental Benefits: Interactions with Individual Wellbeing," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-17, September.
    17. Yulin Liu & Min Zhang & Rujia Liu, 2020. "The Impact of Income Inequality on Carbon Emissions in China: A Household-Level Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-22, March.
    18. Xi Ouyang & Wen’e Qi & Donghui Song & Jianjun Zhou, 2022. "Does Subjective Well-Being Promote Pro-Environmental Behaviors? Evidence from Rural Residents in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-19, May.
    19. Welsch, Heinz & Binder, Martin & Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin, 2021. "Green behavior, green self-image, and subjective well-being: Separating affective and cognitive relationships," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thunström, Linda, 2019. "Preferences for fairness over losses," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    2. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    3. Andreas Bergh & Philipp Christoph Wichardt, 2018. "Mine, Ours or Yours? Unintended Framing Effects in Dictator Games," CESifo Working Paper Series 7049, CESifo.
    4. François Cochard & Alexandre Flage & Gilles Grolleau & Angela Sutan, 2020. "Are individuals more generous in loss contexts?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(4), pages 845-866, December.
    5. Livingston, Jeffrey A. & Rasulmukhamedov, Rustam, 2023. "On the Interpretation of Giving in Dictator Games When the Recipient is a Charity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 275-285.
    6. Andreas Bergh & Philipp C Wichardt, 2022. "Mine or ours? Unintended framing effects in dictator games," Rationality and Society, , vol. 34(1), pages 78-95, February.
    7. Carlos Alós-Ferrer & Jaume García-Segarra & Alexander Ritschel, 2018. "The Big Robber Game," ECON - Working Papers 291, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. Grichnik, Dietmar & Smeja, Alexander & Welpe, Isabell, 2010. "The importance of being emotional: How do emotions affect entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation and exploitation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 15-29, October.
    9. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    10. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    11. García-Gallego, Aurora & Georgantzis, Nikolaos & Ruiz-Martos, María J., 2019. "The Heaven Dictator Game: Costless taking or giving," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    12. Benistant, Julien & Suchon, Rémi, 2021. "It does (not) get better: Reference income violation and altruism," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    13. Reuben, Ernesto & van Winden, Frans, 2008. "Social ties and coordination on negative reciprocity: The role of affect," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1-2), pages 34-53, February.
    14. Julien Benistant & Remi Suchon, 2020. "It Does (not) Get Better: Expected Income Violation and Altruism," Working Papers ECARES 2020-35, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    15. Priyodorshi Banerjee & Sujoy Chakravarty, 2021. "Dictator choice and causal attribution of recipient endowment," Indian Economic Review, Springer, vol. 56(2), pages 351-373, December.
    16. IBANEZ, Lisette & MOUREAU, Nathalie & ROUSSEL, Sébastien, 2015. "L'influence des émotions sur les comportements pro-environnementaux," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 96(2), June.
    17. Franzen, Axel & Pointner, Sonja, 2012. "Anonymity in the dictator game revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 74-81.
    18. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    19. Simon Bartke & Steven J. Bosworth & Dennis J. Snower & Gabriele Chierchia, 2019. "Motives and comprehension in a public goods game with induced emotions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(2), pages 205-238, March.
    20. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth & Thomas Pitz, 2010. "At the Mercy of the Prisoner Next Door. Using an Experimental Measure of Selfishness as a Criminological Tool," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_27, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Behavioral economics; Dictator game; Emotions; Environment; Donation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:66:y:2017:i:c:p:150-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.